"With Socialist Realism Stalin promulgated and imposed a cultural doctrine which in accordance with the ruling party and ideology demanded of the artist the truthful and positive representation of reality plus it also decreed that art should appeal to the masses, be simple, folkloristic and understandable to all people. The Stalinist cultural campaigns of 1936/38 and 1946/48 enforced the doctrine ruthlessly, among the artists denounced for straying from the official line are Dmitri Shostakovich and - in the last campaign - Sergei Prokofiev."-Marco Frei